Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4)

by Jack Murphy

  Ivan looked up at Fedorchenko, who nodded.

  “Do it.”

  Both mortar gunners dropped rounds down the tube and fired up into the mountain. The rounds impacted and exploded, puffs of white snow flung into the air. Fissures appeared in the snow. Then, massive sheets of the white stuff came apart and began to break apart. The avalanche rumbled downhill as the snow came apart in big chunks and began flowing, becoming a river of snow.

  “That should slow those fuckstains down a bit,” Rochenoire said with a laugh.

  “You know they might be able to activate that earthquake weapon they are lugging around with them and bring this entire mountain down on us,” Aghassi reminded him.

  Rochenoire stopped laughing, his expression frozen on his face.

  “Not to worry, we’re too close to them. They would kill themselves in the process.”

  “On your feet,” Fedorchenko ordered the men. “We need to vacate this position before they fire on us again.”

  * * *

  Nate slid to a halt and looked at the avalanche gushing down the mountainside in a white cloud. It made a thundering sound as it tumbled, echoing through the valley.

  “I think we’ve got a problem here,” the MARSOC veteran called back to the others.

  “Cazzo,” Maurizio cursed as he came up alongside Nate.

  “That’s where our guys were firing from, isn’t it?” Deckard asked as he skied forward, the third in the order of movement.

  “Yeah, just about,” Nate said with worry in his voice.

  “Let's get a move on,” Deckard said as he took the lead, pushing into the snow with his whippets. The mercenaries huffed and sweated for another minute of travel until they heard several mortars fire from the Samruk position, causing another avalanche farther away.

  “Neither knows where the other is, and neither have a direct line of fire, so they’re trying to create avalanches on one another,” Dag said, raising his voice so Deckard could hear him.

  “Let’s pick up the pace; we need to consolidate with the rest of our element and find out what the hell is going on.”

  With little choice in the matter, Deckard plowed forward, hoping he wasn’t skiing his way into another avalanche or a stray mortar round.

  * * *

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” Aghassi said.

  Having moved their element 500 meters laterally across the mountain, Samruck’s mortar section dropped a few down the tube, firing into the cliffs above. They couldn’t wait for Deckard to show up when the enemy knew their location.

  The mortar maggots had outdone themselves. The avalanche picked up steam as it slid down the mountain to their front. Sheets of snow crumbled into a rolling mess of debris that flowed right by the Samruk mercenaries before continuing downhill to where they suspected Oculus was located.

  Fedorchenko pulled down his hood and held up his fist, halting their movement. In military terminology, it was called SLLS, or stop, look, listen, and smell. Careful observation helped push the human senses out into the surrounding terrain to detect signs of the enemy. Sure enough, shouting could be heard somewhere below them. The avalanche had hit pay dirt.

  The platoon sergeant smiled. “Let’s go finish them off.”

  * * *

  The enemy’s counter-fire sailed right over the main body of Samruk mercenaries, to their relief. Instead, the 60mm rounds exploded a few hundred meters above Deckard and his advance team. The mountain above them seemed to crack and come apart as another avalanche was triggered.

  “Go, go, go!” Deckard yelled.

  The order didn’t require any further explanation. The avalanche streamed down the draw between two spurs coming off the side of the mountain. The mountaineers quickly realized they had mere seconds before they were swept away, not nearly enough time to move out of the way by climbing up the side of the nearest spur. Their only option was down.

  Almost in unison, Deckard, Nate, Dag, Kurt, Jacob and Maurizio hopped and pivoted their skis at a 90-degree angle, nosing them straight downhill. Launching down the mountain, they skied like they never had before. The avalanche was already tumbling over the ski trails they had left behind just a moment ago.

  Normally, the best way to survive an avalanche was to hug a tree, but of course there were none on Ellesmere Island. All of them knew that outrunning it was close to impossible.

  Deckard picked up speed as he went over a bump and then down a sharper angle while he propelled himself forward with his poles. Swerving to avoid another rock, he kicked up a wave of snow to his side. In his peripheral vision, he saw Dag angle toward a boulder sticking out of the ground. Sailing right up the side of it, he kicked off his skis and scrambled the rest of the way up, saving himself.

  He was one of the lucky ones. The avalanche was right behind Deckard. The snow was cracking and coming apart right under his feet, and he was still nowhere near the bottom of the mountain. His arms burned with lactic acid as he pushed harder and harder, trying to escape his own imminent destruction. His skis stayed just forward of the leading edge of the icy landslide, and for a brief second, he actually thought he was going to make it.

  Then his world turned upside down, his limbs thrown in all directions. The world spun end over end, his vision blurred by snow whisking over his face. Then everything seemed to roll, like being trapped inside a garbage can spinning down a hill. He heard the crunch of snow, and again he was going end over end. His body was racked with spasms as something hard smashed into his lower back.

  Finally, the disorientation came to an end as everything faded to black.

  Chapter 26

  Canadian Arctic

  Quiet, lonely, and empty in all directions. The arctic desert existed as if it had always existed. Isolated from prying eyes and human projections, it simply was. Scant vegetation poked through the snow on the valley floor, waving back and forth in the wind. There were 20 of them in total, moving in a single-file line. The predators moved slowly, almost warily, but still steady and confident. Like the ridges, spurs, and valleys, they had been there for a very long time.

  The white Arctic wolves hunted game, big game that required an unusually large pack. Musk oxen could weigh as much as 900 pounds in the Canadian Arctic. The pack had suffered decline; all of their kind had in recent years as their food sources were diminished.

  The alpha female stopped in her tracks, her paws sinking into the snow as she sniffed the air. Somewhere in the distance, toward the mountains, there was death in the air. Where there was death, there was meat. Changing direction, she led the pack across the tundra, toward their next meal.

  * * *

  Four skiers wearing digital snow camouflage and heavy rucksacks moved roughly parallel to the wolf pack a half of kilometer off their right flank. Both parties were unknowingly heading to the same location. Warrant Officer Barry Cloutier led two sergeants and one master corporal across the frozen valley, the indirect mortar fire leaving them without any further doubts as to the location of the two belligerents they were searching for. With a pair of binoculars, Cloutier had seen troops on both sides caught in avalanches and swept into oblivion.

  Arriving at the foot of the mountain, they spread out and began searching for one of the distant skiers they had seen go under in the avalanche. He had almost made it to the bottom, but had been swept up by the leading edge of it and buried under the snow. In an avalanche, the snow starts moving downhill so quickly, the friction causes it to melt into freezing water. Trapped under the snow, that water then quickly freezes again, entombing the hapless passerby. Whoever it was may very well be dead already.

  “Hey, I found a ski!” the corporal said as he pulled it out of the snow and held it over his head.

  Barry continued over the bumpy snow as his eyes picked out something as well. Slinging his C8 rifle, he reached down. His gloved hands found purchase on something flat and slick.

  “I think I have the other one,” the warrant officer said.

  Grunting and ya
nking, he pulled the ski from the snow.

  “Hold on,” one of the sergeants called out. “Quiet!”

  Barry set the end of the ski down in the snow and listened.

  “There!” the sergeant said. “Did you hear that?”

  “No,” the warrant officer said with a frown.

  “There’s something down there, eh?”

  Skiing over to the sergeant, Barry listened carefully. The wind blew gently in his ears for a long moment before he heard it. A muffled but audible cry.

  Barry and the non-commissioned officer looked at each other.

  “He’s alive.”

  Each of the four soldiers took the snow basket off one of their ski poles and began probing the snow.

  “I think I’ve got something,” the corporal said, prodding his ski pole into the snow a few times to make sure it was hitting something solid.

  The four men bent down and begin digging. They piled the snow behind them as they tunneled down. After clearing a foot of snow with their hands, they found a piece of fabric. The snow underneath it was moving; someone was trying to push to the surface.

  “I think we have an elbow here, boys,” Barry said.

  As they continued digging him out, they noticed that he had at least been smart enough to get his arms up and create a small air bubble under the snow. Heaving armfuls of snow away, they freed his arms and could see his face. His goggles hung around his neck, filled with snow. Amazingly, his ski poles were still held around his wrists by their lanyards.

  “I don’t know who you guys are,” the survivor said in an American accent. “And I’m not sure I care at this point.”

  One of the sergeants held his C8 rifle at the ready.

  “We care very much as to who you are,” Barry replied. “Say something American right now.”

  “Hey, wait a damn—”

  “Say it!” The sergeant standing nearby with his rifle did not look like he was messing around.

  “Ah, dammit. I like titties, beer, and cheeseburgers, OK?”

  “What do you think, Barry?” the sergeant asked.

  “Hmm,” the warrant officer said, rubbing his chin. “OK, he sounds legit.”

  The survivor sighed as the sergeants and corporal continued digging him out of his frozen grave. It was the second time he had nearly met a ghastly fate since almost drowning in the arctic waters of northern Russia just days before.

  “You guys are Canadian, I take it?” he asked as his torso was freed and his rescuers began pulling him up and out of the snow.

  Barry nodded.

  “JTF2?”

  “CANSOF,” Barry said. Canadian special operations. The Canadian government did not confirm nor deny JTF2 operations, and their operators were notoriously low profile, their leader not even willing to say the name of his unit during a combat operation.

  “I’m warrant officer Cloutier. I take it you are part of the American element that your government legitimized with a letter of marque?”

  “So you’ve heard of us?”

  The survivor was finally free of the avalanche and walked in small circles trying to warm his body up, even though he was moving around like the Tin Man.

  “Yeah, we got the brief before we jumped in.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. We saw the drop but didn’t know who it was.”

  “No way to let you know. Comms are being jammed.”

  “Hey, we have incoming,” one of the sergeants warned.

  Four skiers in PenCott SnowDrift camouflage cruised downhill, rushing up to their position fast.

  “It’s OK, those are my guys.”

  The Canadians lowered their rifles.

  “Who are you?” the warrant officer said in a low tone.

  “Deckard.”

  The Canadian hesitated.

  “You’re the ground force commander for the friendly element up here?”

  “Yup, but you guys just cost my XO his new job before he even knew he had it.”

  “Well, I regret to inform you that this is sovereign Canadian territory, Deckard, and as the senior ranking Canadian military member here, I’m now in command. I’ve been instructed to link up and work with you, but there can be no misunderstanding as to the chain of command.”

  “Your mission is my mission.”

  The four skiers stopped in front of Deckard. He eyeballed Kurt, Dag, Nate, and Maurizio.

  “Jacob?”

  Kurt shook his head.

  “We saw him go under,” Dag informed him. “It happened almost right away.”

  “Fuck,” Deckard cursed, trying to shake from his mind the mental image of one of his men freezing to death alone under tons of snow.

  “I’m sorry,” the senior JTF2 operator said. “I didn’t know that you had lost one of your men.”

  “We have lost a lot of men on this operation,” Deckard said as he looked up at the mountain. “But so has the enemy.”

  The nine men watched a pack of wolves begin to climb the mountain, searching for corpses to feed on.

  * * *

  The JTF2 operators cheated forward of the main element, moving out with the Samruk International recce and sniper personnel. The Canadians simply outclassed the vast majority of Deckard’s men on skis and seemed to float just above the snow.

  Linking up with his two platoon sergeants, Deckard’s men renewed their hunt. They had gotten the drop on Oculus with an unexpectedly bold maneuver over the mountain ridge, but they were unlikely to pull off another ambush. As he looked at the enemy’s ski trails, Deckard thought that the odds were high that this time it would actually be them getting caught in an ambush, as the enemy button-hooked back on their own spore. The scouting elements were to help prevent that from happening.

  The Oculus skiers moved in twin files, making sure they skied in each other’s tracks to disguise their numbers. Much of the trail was also covered over by those dragging their ski sled, carrying the device with them. However, Dag had taken a count when they discovered an enemy rally point near the mountain, and estimated that there were around 60 of them left, a large chunk of them killed by Samruk gunfire and avalanches.

  It was late in the afternoon now, but Deckard was feeling better as his body warmed up with the exercise, especially after nearly freezing to death a few times in the last 24 hours. He was also gulping down water, knowing how easy it was to get dehydrated. In the cold, you didn’t even realize you were perspiring. Warrant Officer Cloutier came skiing over alongside Deckard, having come back from one of the scouting parties.

  “I know where they are going,” he announced as he pulled out his topographical map. “It is nearly a one hundred kilometer straight shot across the tundra. Then you come to a fjord that feeds Rawlings Bay. It will be mostly frozen this time of year, giving them easy egress to the coast.”

  “Is there a Canadian military base there or something? How will they get off of Ellesmere?”

  “No idea. I heard there was some private sector work going on around here, laying deep-water fiber optic cables, but without being able to get a solid comms shot to headquarters, there is no way to know where that company’s trawlers are right now.”

  Deckard looked down.

  He could feel it in his bones. Like the rest of his men, he was running on fumes. The Arctic put tremendous stress on the human body and now he was suffering from low caloric intake combined with dehydration and sleep deprivation. He could tell himself that he would give his boys another Leonidas speech and walk the lines screaming about war like in Braveheart, but the reality was that he was going to keel over before much longer.

  “We’re going to have to make camp for the night soon,” Deckard said wearily. “Can you help my guys scout out a suitable location?”

  “No problem,” the Canadian warrant officer replied, seeing the look on the American’s face. The truth was that the JTF2 officer had been extensively trained in winter and Arctic warfare, but had absolutely no idea how the mercenaries had managed to have two full pla
toons scale the mountains of Ellesmere Island in such a short amount of time.

  Speeding up to link up with his men, Barry was already looking for a place that they could lay up for the night, a location where they could lay ambush on their own trail and hopefully avoid a counter-ambush.

  Chapter 27

  Canadian Arctic

  Four figures jogged through the snow as dusk arrived, but these were no Canadian commandos. The four Chinese nationals had surfaced after being deployed by submarine, scuttled their two launch vehicles, ditched their subsurface gear, and ran non-stop to link up with the rest of the Oculus strike force. They had climbed over a mountain on the opposite end of the valley from where the Americans had crossed, but did so with minimal climbing equipment and without stopping to sleep. In fact, they had hardly stopped moving since surfacing in the Arctic Ocean.

  Viktor Serov watched them approach while the rest of his men dug into the embankment they had found, hollowing out hide sites for the night. As detachment commander, he had watched his force of well over 100 men steadily whittled down by the foreign mercenaries in recent days. Now they were down to just over 60 men. They had exacted a price on the mercenaries as well, to be sure, but each day their capabilities were weakened, their numbers diminished, and their strength was sapped from them.

  He was an older man now, without a doubt, but age had made him more effective, more reliant on careful preparation—preparing the operational environment for success and exercising tactical patience. His career in GRU Spetsnaz had matured him over the years. Despite being older than the men he commanded, Serov maintained his physical conditioning and was proud of the fact that many of the younger Iranians, Chinese, and fellow Russians could not outpace him.

  Now the mage had dispatched a new team, the old man, Zhongnanhai, having grown impatient as an expensive and intricately planned operation continued to come apart at the seams. The former Russian colonel took a deep breath, but otherwise showed no outward signs of stress over what he knew to be true: The old men were losing confidence in his leadership.